Lidar is affected by multiple scattering in any optically thick medium, particularly liquid clouds. Millimetre-wave radar is typically only affected when observing deep convective clouds from space. One approach to deal with this problem is to use a variational retrieval algorithm with a forward model that can represent multiple scattering while being both accurate and fast. This code is such a forward model, and consists of two algorithms.

• Link (18 Oct 2012)